


Jack-O'Solo-Lanterns (A Pumpkin Carving Tale)

by rmwfbl



Series: A very USWNT Halloween [2]
Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 09:38:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4955377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rmwfbl/pseuds/rmwfbl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hope doesn't really want to carve pumpkins. Kelley Doesn't really care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jack-O'Solo-Lanterns (A Pumpkin Carving Tale)

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I'm kind of continuing with the fall theme here. Mainly a fluffy one-shot. Gettin Halloweeny with it.  
> Enjoy.

Halloween fever had hit Kelley. Hard.

And since the holiday had seemingly taken over almost every aspect of Kelley O’Hara’s life, it had, by extension, taken over every aspect of Hope Solo’s life as well.  
Hope was not by nature an overly festive person. Especially not for smaller, more arbitrary holidays like Halloween, which she simply brushed off as being for children.  
But Kelley was a child at heart so really, Hope being dragged to a pumpkin patch at eight in the morning on Halloween really shouldn’t have been as much of a surprise as it was.

This was their first Halloween they spent living together, and the young defender was appalled by her girlfriend’s almost offensive lack of festivity. Once she had learned that all Hope had in her house to signify that the keeper even knew it was autumn was an old orange blanket thrown over the back of the couch because it was a “seasonal color” and “seasonal colors” were enough, right?

“This is unacceptable,” Kelley had declared, hands on hips, and in only a matter of hours and a flurry of activity Hope’s house was transformed into a vortex of O’Hara Family Seasonal Enthusiasm: Fall Edition. There’s a skeleton in the front yard, a cornucopia on the kitchen table, a fake spider, and lots of other halloweeny knick knacks. There’s ghost stickers on the windows, a scarecrow (“Kell where in Jesus’ name did you find that!?”), and a stuffed squirrel in a witch’s hat on the couch, and pumpkins. Pumpkins everywhere. So many pumpkins Hope thinks they’re going to start coming out of her ass. She tells Kelley this, but Kelley only responds with advice that she might want to “talk to her doctor about that” and a withering look, daring Hope to touch one of her beloved white/green/mini pumpkins and the declaration that “for the last time, those are not pumpkins, those are gourds.” 

Kelley’s telling Hope stories about how as a child Jerry, Erin, and her would always go pick pumpkins from a farm a few miles down the road, and how more often than not, the trip would end in a fistfight between the three siblings. An all out brawl forming to determine which O’Hara got finally escape home with the best pumpkin- Hunger Games style. But growing up Hope had never been to a pumpkin patch. When (if) her family carved pumpkins they were always the cheap leftover pumpkins laid out in front of a corner grocery store.

So secretly Hope’s curious. 

Kelley drove them to the outskirts of Seattle, to where the properties got larger and the traffic got calmer. And Kelley is animatedly recounting these valiant tales while Hope holds her free hand in Kelley’s lap and enjoying the spark that appears in her girlfriend’s face whenever she talks about her family. They arrive at a little farm just off the interstate and there are only a few other cars there, and the only thing that alerted them to this place’s presence was a “Pick Your Own Pumpkins!” sign just up the road. The ground is soggy per usual, but Hope finds herself unprepared for the whole new level of mud that appears to be present on farm land. Just about the second she steps into the pumpkin patch her tennis shoes are almost completely submerged in muck. She makes a face and yanks her feet out with an unsatisfying squelching noise and follows her undeterred girlfriend.

Kelley had worn her rain boots.

When they get back to Hope’s house Kelley quickly toes off her shoes at the door before hurrying in and digging through the kitchen to find something and then hurrying into the dining (ping-pong table?) room.

“What are you looking for?” Hope asks as she shoulders her way into the rest of the house. She somehow got stuck carrying both of their pumpkins (Kelley picked a longer, more rectangular pumpkin, which, according to her “was funnier and had more personality.” Hope picked a giant round one because “It’s a pumpkin. Pumpkins are big and round.”).

“This!” the younger woman replies excitedly, before covering one half of the ping-pong table with a red and white checkered table cloth. Realization slowly registered on Hope’s face.

“Kelley, no.”

“Kelley, yes!” she replied, taking her pumpkin out of Hope’s arm and setting it on the table. It was right about then that the goalie noticed the telltale glint of metal on the table as well, and the thought of Kelley wielding any sort of sharp object gave her horrible, crippling anxiety.

“I’m not carving pumpkins, Kel.”

“Why notttt?” she whined.

“Well, I’m not 10, for starters.” Hope said crossing her arms.

“You’re right, Carli’s number 10, but I have no idea why your jersey number has anything to do with your ability to carve a pumpkin,” she wittily retorted.

“You know what I mean”

“GET IN THE SPIRIT, SOLO!” Kelley shouted gesturing wildly with an almost comically large knife in her hands. Hope’s life- or was that just the knife- flashed before her eyes.

“Woah, woah, woah, let’s set the pointy thing down shall we?” 

Kelley begrudgingly set the butcher’s knife down. She tried a new approach.

“Baby?”

“Oh, God,” Hope said, purposefully avoiding looking at the younger woman’s face, knowing the most adorable, heart wrenching puppy dog eyes were waiting to catch her in a moment of weakness. “Kelley, you know this just isn’t fair.”

“Pleeeeease, Babe,” she said sweetly, batting her eyelashes and running her hands up and down the taller woman’s arms.

“Mine is just gonna turn out horrible looking!”

“That doesn’t even matter, no one cares if it’s good or not, but if you care that much about what the neighbors will think of your artistic talent, you can always tell them that I was the one that made yours,” Kelley bargains. Hope looks at her sideways and Kelley can see Hope’s resolve falling apart before her eyes. She knows she’s got her right where she wants her. Kelley goes in for the kill. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while once we’re finished…” Kelley purrs seductively, playing with a lock of the older woman’s loose hair.

Hope has her apron on in record time.

The aprons were really a good idea on Kelley’s part, because it’s been so long since Hope’s carved a pumpkin that she doesn’t remember just how much of a mess it was. Hope insists on being the one to cut the holes in the top of their pumpkins. She doesn’t feel any real need to let her loveable little squirrel hold anything sharp and life-threatening for longer than absolutely necessary. Somehow, in the process of gutting out their pumpkins, Kelley manages to get more pumpkin on her than in the bucket they had dragged onto the table. Hope’s up to her elbows in slimy gross pumpkin guts, and Kelley’s got the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack blaring from her phone, and Hope doesn’t really want to admit it to herself, that Kelley was right, but she’s honestly having fun. Her eyes are crinkling from smiling as her girlfriend tells her about all the crazy ideas she has to carve into her pumpkin. The Mona Lisa, Freddie Krueger’s face, a squirrel. Hope’s unashamedly enjoying herself and Kelley’s company and today is well on its way to getting marked down as one of her favorite halloween memories.

The actual carving of the pumpkins is an intricate process. For Kelley, at least. She insists on mapping out the outline of her carving with a sharpie first before even thinking of touching her pumpkin with a knife. Hope’s just all in. Hope just using an extremely educated guess to know that she’s probably not going to be any good at this, so she doesn’t bother planning out her design, and just gets straight to the carving and scraping. They each have their jack-o-lanterns facing away from each other so the other can’t see it, and Kelley’s talking shit. 

“Mine’s gonna be the best.”

“This is not a competition, KO.”

“That’s just what losers say to feel better about themselves.”

Hope sighed and rolled her eyes. Her overly competitive girlfriend had been going on and on about her innate talent to create jaw dropping artwork out of pumpkins. At first she was just humoring her when she had started to carve, but now, with the incessant trash talk her own competitive streak is coming out and she’ll be damned if she’s going to be shown up by a five foot five seven year old with an ego. So now she’s concentrates extra hard on what she’s making, her eyes squinting and her jaw clenching as if this was an actual match. Everyone once in awhile she would glance up at Kelley to try to sneak a peek at what she was doing, but she was all secrets. She was working steadily and seemed to be pouring every ounce of concentration she had into her jack-o-lantern, her flyaway hairs sticking up at every angle and her tongue poking out of her mouth. Hope had to remind herself a few times that right now Kelley was the enemy because a couple times Hope had lost her focus, from either daydreaming about how cute Kelley was or from keeping a careful eye over the other girl as she attempted to cut-- no, stab-- various shapes out of her pumpkin.

It’s a while before they both finish, but when they do, Kelley is looking at Hope with smug, triumphant look plastered all across her freckled face, and Hope is looking back at her through the corner of her eye and quirking an eyebrow. They each have their finished jack-o-lanterns in their hands, ready to reveal to the other. Each is dying to know what the other made, and each is pretty confident that they’ll be the winner.

“Prepare to be amazed, Solo.”

“Not a chance, O’Hara.”

“Count of three?” Kelley asked.

“Count of three.”

“1...2...3!”

“Huh?” Hope said confused.

“What… How?!” Kelley exclaimed.

Hope was confused because the jack-o-lantern Kelley had made looked like- well... she couldn’t really tell you what it looked it even if she wanted to. It looked like it was supposed to be a face- an abstract goose, perhaps? That had been attacked in an alley (those were supposed to be teeth, right?). It was like trying to decipher a Picasso. Or a toddler’s artwork. 

Kelley was surprised, but now a little enraged because Hope’s pumpkin is just so damn impressive, and she feels like she’s been lied to and led to believe that Hope was no good at this. It’s the Seattle Reign logo, and perfectly rendered to boot. Complete with just the right amount of scraping and and cutting, she had managed to make the queen look just as intimidating as it did on the jerseys. She looks down at the pumpkin in her keeper’s hands. Then back at the pumpkin, stunned into brief silence by the keeper’s sudden ability to be the Leonardo Da Vinci of pumpkin carving.

“I thought you were bad at this!” She yells out in indignation, her eyes now glaring because Hope Solo may have just beaten her at her own game.

“I did too, I guess I just… got the hang of it eventually,” Hope admitted, honestly she had been just as surprised at her recently discovered hidden talents “And I know the Reign logo pretty well so i decided to just do that instead of trying to make a face. Um… What’s yours?”

Now Kelley is seething. Not only has her long established title as best pumpkin carver in the world (as far as she is concerned) been jeopardized, but the very quality of her own carving has just been called into question.

“Excuse you, but it is a shark. A shark eating a person,” She huffs indignantly, “probably eating some cocky show-off goalkeeper or something.”

“What?” she laughs as Kelley’s hazel eyes burn a hole through hers “Wait. Are you really mad at me?”

“No....”

“You so are! You’re a sore loser, Kell, admit it.”

“I'm not a sore loser because I didn’t lose!”

“Oh come on you-”

“Nope!”

Hope sighed. Kelley’s overly competitive nature would allow this back and forth argument to last for hours. “Come on babe. Let’s go put these out front so that everyone can see our beautiful handywork,” she said, putting some candles and a lighter in her pocket. Kelley somewhat reluctantly followed her outside, hanging her head and dragging her feet. They set their jack-o-lanterns on the front steps and lit them, giving each carving its full effect. Hope’s is just even more perfect looking (if such a feat was possible), and if Hope squints and cocks her head to left a little, she think she can just make out the mouth of a shark on Kelley’s.  
“You know,” Hope joked, trying to lighten the mood, “if you still want to switch pumpkins and have you tell the neighbors you made mine, I”ll let you.” Kelley just glares back, but can’t quote help a small snort of amusement from escaping.

 

Hope’s busy cleaning up the last few remaining seed from her side of the table when a large handful of pumpkin goop and seeds flies across the table and splatters all over Hope’s face. They’re both frozen for a second, Hope out of shock and Kelley out of fear, a mischievous glint in her eyes and a triumphant smirk across her lips. But then Hope ever so slowly brings her hand up to wipe the orange gunk off her face, before even more slowly bringing her eyes up to meet those of the guilty party.

“Oh it’s on.”

Suddenly the room is a mess of flying chunks of pumpkin, pumpkin guts, and pumpkin seeds, and nobody is safe. Not even Leo, who runs into the other room for cover after getting covered in guts by a rogue handful. The two women are rushing to grab more handfuls of gunk out of the the bucket and whipping it at each other as fast as they can. They’re laughing and shrieking, chasing one another around the ping pong table, trying to get the upper hand, and Hope damn near tackles Kelley when the defender completely steals the entire bucket off the table. Eventually, however, they run out of pumpkin to assail one another with, and are lying on the floor, rolling around laughing so much their sides hurt. Kelley still throws the occasional pumpkin seed at Hope, though, and she seems to have forgotten all about her earlier temper tantrum, the pout on face replaced with a giant, gleeful smile. There’s pumpkin in their hair and the room looks like the site of some orange and goopy natural disaster, pumpkin on the walls, in the carpet, smearing the window, and Hope couldn’t care less. Because right now she’s not focusing on the fact that she’ll probably have to call the call the carpet cleaner tomorrow or the gross pumpkiny smell coating everything, she’s focusing on how Kelley has curled herself into a ball against Hope’s side from laughing so hard and how her hazel eyes look especially golden tonight. So Hope kisses Kelley, one messy hand tangling in her hair and the other keeping her close, pressing against the small of her back. Kelley lets out a small hum of contentment and smiles into the kiss and rolls them over so Hope is laying on top of her, running one hand up and down her sides tantalizingly while her other hand softly cradles Hope’s jaw. Hope just keeps wondering why she was ever so reluctant go pumpkin picking and carving with her girlfriend, because making out on top of a gross, slimy pumpkin covered floor has never been sweeter. They’re teasing each other, Kelley nipping at Hope’s pulse point and Hope, in return, letting her hands wander teasingly up Kelley’s shirt and just under her waistband. Hope has finally removed Kelley’s top (their aprons long forgotten in a heap a few feet away) and is leaving kisses up and down her chest and stomach, toying with the button Kelley’s jeans when they are suddenly and so rudely interrupted by a loud ring of the doorbell. Their eyes widened as they looked at each other in synchronized realization.

“Shit!” Kelley whispered.

“Trick-or-treaters,” Hope groaned.

Kelley and Hope are sitting out on the porch steps later that night, passing out candy to trick-or-treaters, and it’s instantly becoming obvious whose pumpkin the crowd favorite is tonight.

“You made that?”

“NIce! I love the Reign!”

“Is that a Seattle Reign jack-o-lantern?”

Kelley seems to be getting more and more agitated as the night goes on, her worst fears confirmed. Hope’s pumpkin was better. She was a loser. Gone were the days, apparently, when people appreciated the subtle nuances and originality that made for a truly great pumpkin carving. Another troupe of children come barreling up the sidewalk, eager to get more candy.

“Nice jack-o-lantern!” a kid in a pirate’s costume exclaimed. Kelley rolled her eyes: probably just another admirer of Hope’s pumpkin. 

“Is that a shark eating a person?!” Kelley’s eyes shoot up.

“Yeah it is, actually.”

“Wow that’s the coolest one I’ve seen all night!”

“Really? You think so?”

“Totally. Are you a professional?”

“Professional what?”

“Pumpkin Carver,” the child stated matter of factly.

“No,” Kelley beams, basking in the glory, “but I get that alot.”

The kid Leaves with two extra handfuls of candy but the giant grin on Kelley’s face doesn’t leave for the rest of the night. And Hope’s smiling too because just this little small gesture seemed to go along way and make Kelley forget everything that had happened earlier that day, and her spirits are higher than a kite and it’s just so endearing to watch Kelley get excited about something so simple, and it makes Hope happy.

Hope certainly hadn’t bribed the kid ahead of time with candy though.

Later that night even, Kelley still won’t shut up about it. “Did you hear that, Hopey? Professional pumpkin carver. Maybe if this whole professional soccer player thing doesn’t work out I can just be a professional pumpkin carver instead.”

“Yeah, yeah, now get your professional pumpkin carving ass in bed, why don’t you,” Hope grinned as she tugged the smaller woman towards her, “I wanna finish what we started earlier.”

**Author's Note:**

> so what do you guys think? like my stuff so far? If you have any other ideas feel free to let me know and i just might write it or incorporate it into my story!
> 
> This fic was inspired by a guest who commented on my last fic: "You could also continue with the fall theme. Kelley begging Hope to carve pumpkins with her and Hope turns out showing Kelley up with her skills haha."


End file.
